Heretofore it has been customary to use a dielectric material containing barium titanate as dielectric ceramics for an electronic component such as a multi-layer ceramic capacitor. The multi-layer ceramic capacitor includes a stack of dielectric layers made of dielectric ceramics and conductor layers which are alternately laminated, and, downsizing and an increase in capacity have been achieved by reducing the thickness of the dielectric layer. While the level of downsizing and capacity increase, the reduction of the layer thickness of the dielectric layer leads to an increase in the intensity of an electric field applied to the dielectric layer, with consequent difficulties in ensuring reliability in, for example, dielectric strength and lifetime under a high temperature load. Another problem is that, due to a decrease in crystal grain size in the dielectric layer entailed by the reduction of its layer thickness, the relative permittivity of the dielectric layer is lowered, with consequent difficulties in attaining advantageous effects of increased capacity by the reduction of the layer thickness of the dielectric layer.
In recent years, studies have been made as to a dielectric ceramic material which exhibits high relative permittivity sufficient to obtain high capacitance even when the thickness of the dielectric layer is increased to an extent that would ensure reliability. For example, CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) has been proposed to date (refer to Non Patent Literature 1, for example).